What did you do rocket wise today?

The Rocketry Forum

Help Support The Rocketry Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
I repaired the crashed rocket that carried the whistling nerf darts. Sprayed primer on a new build before it got to windy. And I started a new rocket I hope will whistle. I'm going to try split fins.
 
Actually over the past couple of days. Finally got out and put 12 park fliers in the air with my grandson. Tested out the Flightsketch Mini a couple of times (nice data but it was tethered to the nose cone so I got a ton of altitude artifacts after ejection due to jostling around). Popped a fin on 1 during recovery and all the rest came down unscathed.

Today its main paint coat on the Vexillum and final detail paint on the AnArcas.
 
Club friend and I did our Star Orbiter/I205 drag race on Saturday. The result was slightly disappointing, but still enjoyable.

His re-kitted about 500 ft up, and mine lasted about 3 seconds and got high before it also met its end. We surmise it was the estes body tubes since he glassed his fins and I laminated mine with basswood. I also put bamboo skewer lengths along the axis as minor reinforcing, so that potentially explains its longer flight.

Friend's on the right, my smoke trail on the left (pics courtesy of @TurbulentSphere ). Floating remnants of friend's in 2nd pic

1615400982826.png1615401182537.png

The day wasn't a complete loss, we had ~30 flights on including an L1 and L2 cert for TRA, and UTChat got their SLI flight in. (below)
1615401290964.png

We also had a reflight of a club member's 4x Mars Lander upscale on a K850. This time it was painted and had spring loaded landing legs with bigger chutes
1615401371138.png1615401398136.png1615401427089.png

There was also a 2-stage project that flew with us a couple times before and this time experience an unfortunate and inexplicable sustainer deployment failure
1615401709685.png

Last but not least, Turbulent Sphere's very own Flying Christmas Present(TM)* *contains more than coal
1615401531042.png

Motor count for the day was a mid-M
1615401896230.png
 
Finally finished painting my AeroTech ARCAS HV rebuild (I screwed up one about two months ago to the point I scrapped it after salvaging usable parts and started over). The paint job sucks as I had some issues with the white rattle can (Krylon Maxx), but I'm more interested in flying than having a pristine finish, so I didn't bother correcting it!

Finished the white yesterday, and the red today. Once dry, I can add decals, rig the recovery laundry and go fly! :clapping:
 
Went out and flew after several months, ranged from A's to a G. First flight of the Mach 1 Star Cruiser, and 29mm Big Daddy. Only loss was an expected Hi-Flier. Also had my first lawn dart on an Loc Viper III. Heard the ejection charge but failed to push the nosecone out. View attachment 454663
:( ..I had a Phantom 4000 come down like this. It wasn't pretty. About how high did it go? Must have had good speed coming back to do this.
 
Spoke with a student from one of the uni teams from our city for about an hour. He had quite a few questions about careers and that sort of thing. He even asked if I would do anything different if I had the chance again over my career (no!). I did lament the fact it was a bit slow for space-related activiites to get going so that was a factor in my career progression, and I may have liked to be in the space industry (I get spectrometers so that is pretty good). A great discussion about how his engineering can lead him any direction he chooses and how he might achieve that. That it is not what he learned during the course, but that he has been given a method of learning. Also encourage him to read widely and expand his knowledge of areas outside his normal bailiwick. A really good discussion, including both HPR and professional rocketry (I am less of an expert in that area).

Also had some smaller fins printed for my VTS. The original ones had a decent amount of control authority, but I want to dial that back a little for the next flights. About a 30% reduction in surface area. These are printed in a glass-filled resin on our SLA printer.

Fins.jpg
 
Last edited:
His re-kitted about 500 ft up, and mine lasted about 3 seconds and got high before it also met its end. We surmise it was the estes body tubes since he glassed his fins and I laminated mine with basswood. I also put bamboo skewer lengths along the axis as minor reinforcing, so that potentially explains its longer flight.
Disappointing, but I'm guessing not completely unexpected; I guess you found the speed of BT60. What kind of velocities were you expecting?
Friend's on the right, my smoke trail on the left
That's a great picture.
 
Disappointing, but I'm guessing not completely unexpected; I guess you found the speed of BT60. What kind of velocities were you expecting?

That's a great picture.

Thrustcurve and Openrocket had some disagreement, but transonic was definitely in the cards. Roughly 70 Gs peak

High flame to rocket ratio is always a good thing!
 
[T]ransonic was definitely in the cards. Roughly 70 Gs peak.
Hm, let's see. Mach 1 is 64.7 gee-sec. At 70 gee, that would be 0.9245 sec if peak acceleration were to hold. Of course it doesn't. Also of course, the speed is already well on its way up before that peak acceleration is reached. So yeah, "within the cards" to say the least.
 
Club friend and I did our Star Orbiter/I205 drag race on Saturday. The result was slightly disappointing, but still enjoyable.

His re-kitted about 500 ft up, and mine lasted about 3 seconds and got high before it also met its end. We surmise it was the estes body tubes since he glassed his fins and I laminated mine with basswood. I also put bamboo skewer lengths along the axis as minor reinforcing, so that potentially explains its longer flight.
Gave this a Like for "re-kitted"... I gotta remember that one. I've always said RSD -- Rapid Spontaneous Disassembly. ;)
 
I've definitely heard re-kitted before, and definitely here. I use Rapid Unplanned Disassembly, which I first heard in relation to testing of mothballed Russian engines slated for Orbital's Taurus II.
 
Back
Top